Product - Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition w/ 5 CAL, OEM

Windows Server 2008 is the most robust Windows Server operating system to date. With built-in, enhanced Web capabilities and included virtualization technology, Windows Server 2008 Standard is designed to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure while helping save time and reduce costs. Enhanced security features help protect your data and network, and provide you with a solid, highly dependable foundation for your business. Additionally, powerful tools give you greater control over your servers and streamline configuration and management tasks.

Web and Applications Platform
Windows Server 2008 Standard provides organizations with the ability to deliver rich Web-based experiences efficiently and effectively, with improved administration and diagnostics, advanced development and application tools, and lower infrastructure costs.

Internet Information Services 7.0 - Windows Server 2008 Standard is a powerful Web application and services platform. The Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 in Windows Server 2008 Standard delivers a completely modular, extensible Web server with expanded application hosting, while retaining excellent compatibility and solving key customer challenges.

Virtualization
Many organizations find that patch management, resource utilization, maintenance costs, and server sprawl are among their biggest challenges. Server virtualization technologies, including the new Windows Server Hyper-V and enhancements to Terminal Services, can help meet all of these challenges by helping you consolidate your resources and realize significant infrastructure and management cost savings.

Windows Server Hyper-V is the hypervisor-based virtualization feature included as a role of Windows Server 2008. It contains everything needed to support machine virtualization. Hyper-V provides the greater flexibility because of dynamic, reliable, and scalable platform capabilities combined with a single set of integrated management tools to manage both physical and virtual resources, which enables you to create an agile and dynamic datacenter and progress toward achieving self-managing dynamic systems.

Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 Standard provides a security-enhanced, easy-to-manage platform for delivering access to centrally managed applications and resources from the Internet by using HTTPS; you do not need to provide access through a virtual private network (VPN) or by opening unwanted ports on firewalls.

 • Terminal Services RemoteApp completely integrates applications running on a terminal server with users' desktops so that they behave as if they were running on the user's local computer; users can run programs from a remote location side by side with their local programs.
 • Terminal Services Web Access permits this same remote application access flexibility via a Web browser, granting an even wider variety of ways users can access programs executing on a terminal server.
 • Terminal Services Gateway enables authorized remote users to connect to terminal servers and remote desktops on the corporate network from any Internet-connected device that is running Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 6.0.

Presentation Virtualization isolates processing from the graphics and I/O, making it possible for users to run an application in one location but have it controlled in another. It creates virtual sessions in which the applications that are executing project their user interfaces remotely. Each session can run only a single application or present the user with a complete desktop offering multiple applications. In either case, several virtual sessions can use the same installed copy of an application.

Application Virtualization separates the application configuration layer from the operating system. It enables applications to run on clients—including desktops, servers, and laptops—without being installed, and allows applications to be administered from a central location. This enables you to run applications that otherwise may not be able to coexist on the same server.

Security and Policy Enforcement
Compliance, authentication, authorization and productivity must go hand in hand to enable businesses to better meet the data privacy and access control requirements demanded by customers and enforced by regulatory requirements. As more people access corporate information from diverse locations, devices, and platforms, it is imperative to ensure that only authorized personnel are able to access sensitive information. At the same time, it is also important that the right people are able to access information without security measures that interfere with productivity.

The security innovations in Windows Server 2008 Standard provide an unprecedented level of protection for an organization’s data, yet they do not compromise productivity. 

Windows Server 2008 Standard includes tools to improve auditing, secure startup, and enable encryption.

Network Access Protection (NAP) provides a new framework that enables you to define health requirements for the network and to restrict computers that do not meet these requirements from communicating with the network. (For example, health requirements may be defined to include having antivirus or antispyware software installed and updated.) In this way, you can define the baseline level of protection all computers must carry when connecting to the network.

Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption provides additional security for your data through full volume encryption on multiple drives, even when the system is in unauthorized hands or running a different operating system time, data, and control.

Read-Only Domain Controller a new type of domain controller configuration in Windows Server 2008 Standard makes it possible to easily deploy a domain controller in locations where its physical security cannot be guaranteed. This is especially useful in a branch office, where users may otherwise have to authenticate over a wide area network (WAN). With a read-only replica of the Active Directory database located closer to the branch office, these users can benefit from faster logon times and more efficient access to authentication resources on the network.

Windows Service Hardening in Windows Server 2008 Standard helps keep systems safe by preventing critical server services from being compromised by abnormal activity in the file system, registry, or network.

Windows Server 2008 Standard includes additional security features:

• Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) enhancements
• A new bi-directional Windows Firewall
• Next-generation cryptography support

Solid Foundation for Business Growth, Reliability, and Productivity
With enhanced Web capabilities, virtualization technologies, and security features, Windows Server 2008 Standard provides a versatile and reliable Windows platform for all of your workload and application requirements.

Server Manager is a unified Microsoft Management Console (MMC) that offers an integrated experience for adding, removing, and configuring server roles, role services, and features.

Windows Deployment Services (WDS) is a suite of components that work together on Windows Server 2008 Standard to provide a simplified, secure means of rapidly deploying Windows operating systems to all of your computers by using network-based installation, without the need for you to work directly on each computer or to install Windows components from CD or DVD media.

Windows PowerShell is a command-line shell and scripting language helps automate common tasks and more easily control system administration and accelerate automation, even in remote locations such as branch offices.

Windows Server 2008 Standard includes a new implementation of the TCP/IP protocol stack known as Next Generation TCP/IP stack for improved scalability and performance.

Server Core to help increase the availability of your business, Windows Server 2008 Standard supports a Server Core installation option, a minimal environment for running specific server roles. With Server Core, you can remove the functions and drivers that are nonessential to your workloads, leaving only the necessary subsystems required for the supported server roles. This capability provides you with a more reliable, secure server that is optimized for running the most demanding applications and services, but requires less patching and servicing.

Windows Server 2008 Standard is a robust and reliable foundation on which to develop, deliver, and manage rich user experiences and applications. Windows Server 2008 Standard provides a secure network infrastructure and reduces costs while increasing technological flexibility and value within your organization.

• Support for 32 GB of RAM for 64-bit systems (4 GB on 32-bit systems)
• Support for up to four multi-core processors
• Up to 250 Network Access Service connections (RRAS)
• Up to 50 Network Policy Server connections
• Up to 250 Terminal Server connections
• Supports Hyper-V-based virtualization and one free virtual instance

Actual requirements will vary based on your system configuration, and the applications and features you choose to install. Processor performance is dependent upon not only the clock frequency of the processor, but the number of cores and the size of the processor cache. Disk space requirements for the system partition are approximate. Itanium-based and x64-based operating systems will vary from these disk size estimates. Additional available hard disk space may be required if you are installing over a network.

Evaluating Windows Server 2008 software does not require product activation or entering a product key. Any edition of Windows Server 2008 may be installed without activation and evaluated for an initial 60 days.

If you need more time to evaluate Windows Server 2008, the 60 day evaluation period may be reset (or re-armed) three times, extending the original 60 day evaluation period by up to 180 days for a total possible evaluation time of 240 days. After this time, you will need to uninstall the software or upgrade to a fully-licensed version of Windows Server 2008.

If you wish to extend the initial evaluation and testing period, please go here and follow the instructions.

Note: If you are evaluating and testing Windows Server 2008 and plan to install the software on your primary machine, it is recommended that you back up your existing data prior to installation.